APA Historical Database: Selected Entries

On January 11:

1842 —
William James was born. James founded the first demonstration
laboratory of psychology equipment in America (1875) and wrote the
classic Principles of Psychology. His approach stressed the
adaptive qualities of thought and behavior, presaging functionalism
and behaviorism. APA President, 1894 and 1904; President, American
Philosophical Association, 1906.

1867 —
Edward Bradford Titchener was born. Titchener promoted his
interpretation of Wundtian experimental psychology, structuralism,
in the United States. Psychology, for Titchener, was the systematic
analysis of mental experience through introspection.

1890 —
The first psychological laboratory at a Canadian university was
inaugurated at the University of Toronto by James Mark Baldwin.
Baldwin was at Toronto from 1889 to 1893 and was serving that
appointment when he participated as a founder of the APA in 1892.

1897 —
Carney Landis was born. Landis is best known for a paper with William
A. Hunt describing the startle response, but he had wide-ranging
interests in abnormal, developmental, physiological, and emotional
psychology.

1899 —
Grete Lehner Bibring was born. Bibring was a prominent psychoanalyst
and a training analyst at the Harvard Medical School.